Tagged: david chalmers

Personal experience and emotions are subjective. They aren’t, however, irreducibly subjective. We will return to this shortly. When I get a cut on my finger, smell pizza, or see different colors, there’s something it is like for me to have these experiences, something that is entirely subjective. This pertains to phenomenal consciousness, the aspect of consciousness that results in Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness. This what it’s like is what philosophers call qualia.58

Qualia feature as an important motivation for accepting ontological arguments, the likes of which were discussed in the previous chapter. They also feature in transcendental arguments (TAGs), which will be discussed in the next chapter. Take, for instance, Richard Swinburne’s and Robert Adams’ Argument from Human Consciousness.59 The argument can appear as follows:

P1 It is a fact that human consciousness exists.

P2 That fact can be adequately explained within a theistic framework (i.e., one which posits God’s existence), whereas it cannot be adequately explained within an atheistic (or naturalistic) framework (i.e., one which denies God’s existence).

P3 Hence, there is a fact which only theism can adequately explain.

C Therefore, God must exist.60

Like Conifer, I will openly admit that this isn’t Swinburne’s or Richard’s exact argument. It is, however, a general form of the argument. The difference is that Swinburne puts emphasis on what he thinks are nonphysical mental states. His argument relies on his preferred theory of mind, substance dualism or Cartesian dualism. It is important to note that not all substance dualists are Cartesians dualists. E.J. Lowe is a substance dualist who divides a human being into two substances: body and person, in where person is a psychological substance that differs from the body.61 Swinburne and Cartesian dualists would instead say that a human being is body and soul; the soul transcends space-time and is a nonphysical substance that isn’t confined to our universe. They would argue that the mind is immaterial and the body is physical.

Given this, P2 implies Swinburne’s stipulation. A naturalistic or atheistic account of consciousness would not be able to account for nonphysical states of consciousness, assuming there are any. P2 or Swinburne’s P1 —that genuinely nonphysical mental states exist — are the premises one has to debase in order to refute his argument. In order to do this, one must show that qualia are not nonphysical and that there can’t be any nonphysical mental states. One can therefore approach qualia through the lens of philosophy of religion and from the perspective of philosophy of mind. Yet if one chooses the first route, it will come to a crossroads with the second route; they will meet at some junction, so this is to say that it’s required for one to have a grasp of competing views in the philosophy of mind prior to ruling out Cartesian dualism.

I will therefore focus on naturalistic theories of mind and approaches to qualia in order to demonstrate where Cartesian dualism goes wrong. As stated above, for Swinburne’s argument to work, substance dualism needs to prove superior to other views in the philosophy of mind. Given the sciences mentioned and given the cogency of some of these other views, it’s not only that substance dualism fails to make a strong case, it’s that it can’t.

C.S. Peirce, writing in 1891, said of Cartesian dualism: “The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find defenders today.”62 More than a century later, matters are more bleak. Neuroscience and cognitive science have marshaled in an incredible body of evidence that strongly suggests that the mind is not one with or part of a disembodied soul. The mind is intimately tied to the very much physical brain and world. Rhawn Joseph, speaking of one his split-brain patients, puts it this way:

2-C complained of instances where his left hand would act in a manner completely opposite to what he expressively intended, such as turn off the T.V., or change channels, even though he (or rather his left hemisphere) was enjoying the program, or perform socially inappropriate actions (e.g. attempting to strike or even strangle a relative). On at least one occasion, his left leg refused to continue going for a walk and would only allow him to return home.63

This could serve as reason why on some accounts, like J.C.C. Smart’s, the mind is reducible to the brain. Joseph, in another paper he wrote in 1988, would conclude that the left and right hemispheres are responsible for different tasks and that because of this, intra-psychic conflicts arise in where “unbeknownst to the left brain, sometimes the right perceives, remembers, or responds to some external or internal source of experience and/or to its own memories and, thus, reacts in an emotional manner” whilst “the left (speaking) hemisphere in turn only knows that it is feeling something but is unsure what or why, or, conversely, confabulates various denials, rationalizations and explanations which it accepts as fact.”64 My own account will go further, since phenomenal consciousness is reducible to more than just the brain. I will briefly discuss three theories that are much more cogent than substance dualism. The case is more than likely that some other view of the mind best explains consciousness.

The first view we will discuss, like the other views, is naturalistic. It is a view born out of the move away from phenomenal and toward psychological explanation. Ryle argued that all mental concepts are accompanied by corresponding behaviors, and that these behaviors are caused by mental states. I want to highlight this view because Gilbert Ryle has an effective and accessible refutation of Cartesian dualism. To him, Cartesian dualism makes a category mistake.65 This occurs when you put one thing that more aptly belongs to another category in the wrong logical category. Ryle uses the example of a prospective student or visitor visiting Oxford who sees almost the entirety of the campus, and then asks whether he can see the university. The individual didn’t realize that the university is comprised of the same buildings he just visited.

To Ryle’s mind, Descartes committed a similar error. The body, on Ryle’s view, accounts for people’s talents, memories, and so on. Descartes, like dualists following him, believed in a soul, the proverbial ghost in the machine. Ryle argued that intelligence is a combination of a number of properties such as wit, spatial capacity, critical thinking, eloquence, and so on. Intelligence doesn’t exist apart from the body. Neither does it exist parallel to it, the way a branch of dualists called parallelists argued. Intelligence is comprised of these various physical properties that are a part of and associated with the body.

If Ryle is correct, Swinburne’s view has already failed. The dualist may retort by claiming that Ryle has simply begged the question. In order for the accusation to stick, it isn’t enough to claim that intelligence and the like are part of the body. If Ryle’s contention is left as is, the dualist might have a point. So there’s more work to be done. There’s also the fact that Ryle conflates the phenomenal and the psychological; the former is concerned with why an experience feels a certain way, with the what it’s like of a given experience whilst the latter focuses on a mental state’s causal role. Chalmers’ summarizes his concern with Ryle’s view: “To assimilate the phenomenal to the psychological prior to some deep explanation would be to trivialize the problem of conscious experience; and to assimilate the psychological to the phenomenal would be to vastly limit the role of the mental in explaining behavior.”66 Perhaps J.C.C. Smart’s reductionism can succeed where Ryle’s view failed.

On Smart’s view, mental states are identical to brain states. My feeling pain in my back is identical with nociceptors responding to a fractured disk in my spine.67 A naturalist defending this view is not only saying that Cartesian dualism commits a category error. S/he is also providing reasons for drawing such a conclusion. If brain states and mental states are identical, then notions of a ghost in the machine are off base. This is the hallmark of a neuroscientific perspective of mind.

Take, for instance, the severe brain trauma experienced by Phineas Gage. An explosion sent a tamping iron through his left cheek bone at a high speed; the iron exited at the top of his head and was found several rods68 behind him. His brain injury was such that it resulted in drastic changes in his behavior. John Martin Harlow, the physician who attended to Gage, published a report in the Bulletin of the Massachusetts Medical Society in where he discussed Gage’s behavioral changes:

His contractors, who regarded him as the most efficient and capable foreman in their employ previous to his injury, considered the change in his mind so marked that they could not give him his place again. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint of advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operation, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible. In this regard, his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was “no longer Gage.”69

Before the hard problem of consciousness, Smart’s theory held more sway. Most philosophers, in other words, readily admitted that mental states are contingent on brain states, albeit not entirely. They added that there are irreducible, nonphysical mental states called qualia.

Saul Kripke and then David Chalmers developed this nonphysicalist theory further. Kripke questions the identity component of the theory whilst Chalmers defends a theory he regards as more complete. Kripke makes use of the philosophy of language and cites rigid designators, which speaks of the same object in all possible worlds. We can think of Hilary Putnam’s famous example of XYZ. Putnam envisions other worlds or even a twin Earth having lakes and rivers in where water isn’t H2O, but rather XYZ. Despite this, though XYZ isn’t water, it is counterpart to our H2O.70

Kripke uses the example of heat being the same as molecular motion. It isn’t that he’s ignoring radiant heat. Rather, he’s highlighting molecular motion that one feels as heat. He then suggests that we can use these analogies to show that this isn’t the case with the brain process of pain. He also suggests that it is possible for such processes not to be felt as pain. Kripke concludes that mental states aren’t contingent on brain states in the same way the sense of heat is contingent on molecular motion.

Chalmers, on the other hand, proceeds from the question “Why should there be something it is like to be such a system?”71 Even though he admits that the aforementioned sciences have given us a better understanding of human behavior, he believes we are in the dark with regards to consciousness and that it remains mysterious. He tries to develop a theory of consciousness by taking consciousness seriously, by assuming “that consciousness exists, and that to redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive or behavioral functions are performed is unacceptable.”72 Even though he directs his work at people “who feel the problem in their bones,”73 it is of particular interest because Chalmers’ theory accounts for what I agree are three relevant variables, namely the structures of consciousness and awareness, and information. Chalmers’ theory is also one that takes qualia very seriously. So even if Swinburne himself or a proponent of his argument were to abandon Cartesian dualism and instead argue that what’s irreducibly nonphysical about the mind are qualia, then a reductionist like myself would be obligated to contend with Chalmers’ view.

I am, in other words, throwing the theist a bone. Swinburne’s substance dualism is out of style and his discussions with Adams are dated.74 Regardless of this, I want to update his argument with a modern nonphysicalist view that can be ushered in to defend the argument. Chalmers’ view fits the description and being that he accepts the insights of modern science, though he only accepts them as they regard the so-called easy problems, his view is far superior to a view that states that the insights of modern science don’t explain mental states at all or one that would ignore the insights of cognitive science and neuroscience.

Chalmers does not do this. In fact, he feels that scientists ignore what he coins the hard problem; he feels that the question of what it’s like isn’t even asked or is brushed aside for some far off date. This is why I emphasize that I partly share the Churchlands’ and Dennett’s view. Recall my discussion on nominalism in the previous chapter. Unlike the Churchlands and Dennett, I won’t simply eliminate phenomenal consciousness. I will admit that it definitely exists, but I will attempt to reduce it in an unexpected way. I will do this by reducing qualia to multiple lower level phenomena. So like a nominalist who states that ‘humanity’, for instance, can’t be aptly called a universal, I will argue that qualia cannot be understood as nonphysical. So it’s more a recalibrating of the way we understand qualia, a way of redefining the term. It’s not merely the what it’s like of an experience, but more so what it’s like to experience this or that, i.e., what it’s like to experience one particular thing or another.

To be fair, contending with Chalmers’ work can fill a book of its own. It’s almost a crime that I’m devoting part of a chapter to his theory. What’s equally criminal is that I’m devoting a short space to my own theory. I will, despite these concerns, highlight my issues with Chalmers’ theory and then present my own. I feel that the important parts of this particular task can be done in a short space like this one and I will set out to do that.

To be clear, Chalmers’ view is naturalistic. He does not offer a supernatural account of mind. So when I say that I’m throwing the theist a bone, I am not at all saying that Chalmers rendered a supernatural explanation for consciousness. What I am saying, however, is that his account can be reconciled with supernaturalism. He can be regarded as a panpsychist, one who thinks all things are somewhat conscious. Chalmers is not arguing that thermostats, for instance, are self-conscious. What he means is that there’s something it is like to be a thermostat. He acknowledges that most people would recoil and feel that such a conclusion is intuitively nonsense, but he adds that such people have to present an argument(s) to show that a thermostat isn’t conscious in the phenomenal sense.

An analogous view is Leibniz’s view on substance and his subsequent philosophy of mind. For Leibniz, bare monads have perceptions. In fact, bare monads have infinitely many perceptions. Furthermore, all monads, whether bare or complex, perceive the universe at every moment.75 Given this, a theist can put a supernaturalistic spin on Chalmers’ view. Chalmers admits that his view is speculative and that speculation is necessary to get ideas on the table. A theist, despite the fact that all speculation is not created equal, can take it upon himself to offer further speculation, the kind that meshes better with their own beliefs.

This recognition isn’t the only reason I find Chalmers view concerning. Chalmers has gone too far in suggesting that thermostats have phenomenal consciousness, that there’s something it is like to be a thermostat.76 In offering my reductionism, which avoids his equivalence between reductionism and logical supervenience, I will also offer an argument against the notion of a conscious thermostat. Before that, I have to offer a minor quibble.

Chalmers expresses reluctance in giving up hope on materialist reductionism. He states that we have to go beyond materialism in order to account for consciousness despite the fact that it’s beautiful and thus far successful. He presents an argument against materialism that immediately struck me as false, especially in light of materialism’s explanatory success. Perhaps we don’t have to go beyond it. Maybe we are required to rethink or reframe the problem, and I happen to think Chalmers has contributed much to what can result in a working theory of consciousness. To summarize his argument, he argues that if we recognize that there are conscious experiences in our world, we must grant that it’s logically possible for there to be a world (think universe) wholly identical to ours save the fact that the positive facts of consciousness aren’t the case. From this he concludes that materialism is false.77 His notion of philosophical zombies (p-zombies) also stems from this logical possibility.78

As will be repeated in different ways throughout, one should be wary of drawing ontological conclusions on the basis of logical considerations. I can certainly imagine a p-zombie, but it doesn’t follow that they exist in this world or another. This rests on the following questions: whether conceivability implies logical possibility and whether logical possibility implies ontological reality.79 Chalmers, to my mind, is committing the same mistake Anselm committed when he argued from the conception of the greatest being to the existence of it. My suspicion, and I’m not sure this suspicion occurs as often as it should in philosophy, is that everything that is logically possible can’t possibly have an ontological place in this world or another.

As mentioned earlier, materialism has a successful track record, so abandoning it at first sign of seeming failure is to throw the baby out with the bath water. If materialism is beautiful, simple, and elegant — everything one would want a good theory to be — why the sudden knee-jerk reaction? Why abandon it now, especially when one admits that phenomenal consciousness is poorly understood? Chalmers openly admits that we have nothing in the way of psychophysical laws or a theory of consciousness that accounts for the phenomenal aspects of our experience and yet, he’s willing to throw out a viable framework that has a proven streak of success.80 I am wary of going that far.

Even if I offer an inductive argument, Hume notwithstanding, one can accept the conclusion that the theory of consciousness will be materialistic. So as to avoid the Problem of Induction altogether, I can take a more scientific, hypothetico-deductive approach and offer a series of hypotheses each having a set of expected circumstances should they turn out to be true. Upon experimentation, I can either falsify or confirm each hypothesis and from this, get a theory of consciousness. I must confess that I don’t know what exactly that will look like. When discussing my own p-zombie, I will offer conjecture that may prove to be a viable hypothesis.

My own view, which I’ll call Hegelian reductionism, is also a naturalistic view that I think will succeed at a mutiple-reduction of consciousness. Like Chalmers admitted of his theory, I’ll admit that my theory is speculative. I agree that much speculation is needed to get us going in the right direction. By multiple-reduciton, I am not arguing that mental states are identical to physical states. I am not arguing that mental states are reducible to neurological states. Nor am I arguing that consciousness is restricted to the brain, that consciousness can, in other words, exist in a vacuum. As Hegel recognized in his Phenomenology of Spirit and as Chalmers explained in The Conscious Mind, there are two structures that have to be accounted for: as Chalmers calls them, the structure of consciousness and the structure of awareness, both of which are mediated by an information space.

The relevant question is: awareness of what? Chalmers and Hegel will both acknowledge that we are aware of things around us. Chalmers explains that “the structure of consciousness is mirrored by the structure of awareness, and the structure of awareness is mirrored by the structure of consciousness.”81 A good analogy is the upside-down from the Netflix Original “Stranger Things.” In the upside-down, the small town of Hawkins, Indiana is represented in a manner that is roughly identical topographically and geometrically. Will’s house is the same distance from Hawkins Laboratory in the upside-down and in the actual world.82 In like manner, one’s visual field has a size, a scope, a given geometry that corresponds to what is represented in the structure of awareness.

Though I have no qualms with Chalmers’ structural coherence or with his notion of information, which he characterizes as the “specificity of a state within a space of different possibilities,”83 I do have qualms with the direction he takes when addressing the question of whether experience is ubiquitous. The first postulate of my own theory of consciousness is that phenomenal consciousness belongs to biological beings. As Todd Tremlin states, “as a biological machine…the human central nervous system has much in common with those other living organisms, designed, as all are, to control bodily function and to interpret and respond to signals received from the outside world.”84 This isn’t to say that phenomenal consciousness cannot, at some point in the future or even now in an unobserved present (e.g. a world in where sufficiently advanced aliens reside), belong to robots or AI. I grant that such entities can have phenomenal consciousness, but as far as we currently know, only biological beings have it. It follows that I don’t attribute phenomenal consciousness to thermostats, air conditioners, or what have you.

What’s required for phenomenal experience is what Hegel coined as the thing and its properties. Put another way, we can use the Lockean terminology discussed in chapter two: a thing and its qualities. We can think of things, their shape, mass, and extension, and also their color, texture, and dispositions. A thermostat lacks this awareness because it lacks the apparatus usually associated with awareness. From the human all the way down to the slug, I agree with Chalmers because all biological beings have sense apparatus. Clearly this is where the structure of awareness takes shape because without such apparatus as our central and peripheral nervous systems, eyes, ears, nose, and hands, we would receive no information and thus, lack phenomenal experiences. Due to limitations of language, we might say that a thermostat senses thermal expansion and then knows to switch an electrical circuit either on or off. It would be a mistake to conflate sense as just used with sense in the way we normally construe it.

A thermostat does not sense anything. It is a tool that is constructed in a certain way in order to achieve a desired effect. Thermostats have bimetallic strips that are comprised of two different metals. These strips are placed back to back. The reason two different metals are used is because the one will have a high coefficient of linear expansion and will therefore, expand when the temperature increases and this results in the bending of the bimetallic strip in one direction toward either opening or closing the circuit. One might contend that I have merely explained how it works and have not cancelled out phenomenal consciousness in thermostats. I will retort by saying that the person making such a claim has begged the question. Despite the fact that we haven’t rendered a viable theory of consciousness, they are content with imbuing objects like thermostats with phenomenal consciousness. Something has gone awfully awry.

Biological beings, like humans and slugs, and Chalmers would agree, were not created for a given purpose. They were not designed to carry out a specific task or set of tasks. They do not operate in a given way. Furthermore, they have sense apparatus, some far different from others. We can imagine that the talons of a bald eagle have a similar textile sense to human hands. Yet if we admit that, per Hegel, texture has arguably as much to do with the object in question as it does with extremities, whatever similarity in textile sense might exist in the talon and the hand including the corresponding qualia of touch, are reducible to some combination of the objects being felt and the dispositions pertinent to each extremity. So smoothness, hardness, roughness, leatheriness, and the like will be partly due to whatever the talon or hand is touching. Far from eliminating qualia, I am locating the what it’s likeness of our experience not only in our consciousness, but also in what Hegel referred to as the objects of consciousness, things and their qualities. As stated earlier, consciousness cannot exist in a vacuum.

All one has to do is return to the common examples of qualia. There’s something it is like to smell pizza, experience pain, see a given color, and so on. If matters weren’t as they are, if light were not an astrophysical phenomenon that accounts for the available spectrum of colors we see, if chemistry didn’t result in the different textures we feel, if expansion of molecules didn’t result in warmth, if taste buds and receptors didn’t exist in the papillae on the tongue, inner cheeks and esophagus, if we lacked both our peripheral and central nervous systems, our phenomenal experiences would be nonexistent. So phenomenal experience is not reducible to just the brain, though the brain no doubt plays a pivotal role in interpreting or mediating the information relayed from the objects of consciousness. Consciousness, it would follow, is also reducible to physical structures like skin, papillae, eyes, ears, noses, nervous systems and so on. It would also follow that it’s reducible to the objects around us and to the physical phenomena and laws that permit color, heat, and sound.

Think of the particular cadence of a guitar when listening to a player who plays well. The sound is not exactly mysterious, given that an acoustic guitar and electric guitar are designed to sound somewhat distinct. The beautiful cadence of a melody or a solo can be contrasted with the harsh and unpleasant sensations one receives from the chaotic sounds coming from a novice player. The notes are more than likely not crisp; the chord is not clear and very often a novice player will cancel out a note in the chord with his clumsy fingers. Yet the cadence of a well-played guitar is due not only to the design of the guitar, acoustic or electric, and if electric, it’s not only due to the amplifier and pedal board, but most importantly, it is due also to the expertise of the person playing the guitar, the individual who composed the song. Music is often imbued with personal experience and emotion, both of which a number of listeners will find relatable.

In this sense, phenomenal experience is reducible in more ways than one and it is unclear whether a set of psychophysical laws are even necessary. If consciousness is not reducible to merely the brain, but also reducible to the objects of consciousness, if, in other words, consciousness is reducible to the information bridging Chalmers’ structure of consciousness and structure of awareness, then we would have to make do with explaining consciousness through existing laws. So though this can be seen as sort of an eliminativism of qualia, I am not arguing, like Dennett and the Churchlands do, that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion and that qualia don’t exist.85 The former is not an illusion and the latter definitely exist, but they pose no great mystery.

Think of a tetrachromat, for example, a woman identified as cDa29 in a recent study conducted by Gabriele Jordan.86 If you take the monochromat thought experiment seriously, if you think that someone like Mary, a scientist who has lived her entire life in a black and white room, is logically possible, then it follows that you agree with the conclusion that when she first sees a color, she only learns what it’s like to see that color. She already knew that colors existed because she’s an expert in neuroscience and is familiar with the electromagnetic spectrum.87 The vast majority of us are trichromats in that our eyes have three kinds of cone cells. This means that it is entirely possible for us to learn what it’s like to see a color we currently do not see, a color we currently can’t even fathom.

Yet an astute observer will notice that our learning of what it’s like to see this color is simultaneous with seeing the color. Therefore, the object possessing that color, the astrophysical phenomenon of light permitting the color, and this new fourth cone in our eyes would be fully responsible for our experience. Without any of these factors, we would not be able to have this experience, let alone consider what it’s like to have it. So my eliminativism doesn’t do away with qualia, but rather with the mystery that purportedly accompanies them. I am not arguing, like the Churchlands, that it’s a pseudo-issue like Ptolemaic celestial spheres. What I’m arguing is that pain, for example, feels a certain way because of what this specific quale reduces to, due to what it’s like to experience this or that — whether an object or a richer experience like sky diving or admiring a painting.

Compare an oil burn on the hand to a piercing of the hand. How have we convinced ourselves that the oil doesn’t have a given chemistry and thus, a given set of dispositions and that, on the other hand, the blade of a knife doesn’t have a chemistry distinct from that of the oil and therefore, a given set of dispositions that differ from that of the oil? The oil’s viscosity and the fact that its boiling point is roughly one and a half times more than the boiling point of water account for the skin blistering feelings on the hand. The blade’s hardness and sharpness account for the skin piercing, nerve damaging feeling in the hand. This isn’t to say that both pains can’t be felt on and within the hand, but they are distinct because the objects causing the pain are distinct. There is a sense in which phenomenal consciousness is reducible to these distinct objects.

I think that such a theory, at the very least, lifts the veil. This theory would, in other words, do away with the mystery that often surrounds qualia. By extension, this Hegelian theory of consciousness does away with the motivation a theist has for being convinced by Swinburne’s Argument from Consciousness, ontological arguments, and TAGs. What’s more is that this theory reintroduces materialism thus resulting in an overall consistency in a naturalistic philosophy, the likes of which I’m presenting in this work.

This theory also proves superior to Cartesian dualism because, unlike in the case of dualism, mental states are confined to the physical world and are explained, in a consistent manner, via physical parameters and objects of experience. Unlike the Cartesian dualist, this theory doesn’t make use of an ethereal substance that somehow interacts with a physical substance. As Chalmers stated, “it remains plausible that physical events can be explained in physical terms, so a move to a Cartesian dualism would be a stronger reaction than is warranted.”88Cartesian dualism also violates principles of simplicity and plausibility, unless one has a predilection for preferring a theory of consciousness that’s much more complex than it has to be, not to mention beyond the reach of our senses, scientific tools, and so on. A Cartesian dualist, in light of neuroscience and cognitive science, would be left with no choice but to deny the portrait offered by these sciences. My theory fully accepts these portraits and makes good use of them.

Given this, consciousness need not be contingent on god. There are no nonphysical mental states. Qualia, at least at the start of this chapter, seemed to be the most viable candidate. As it turns out, qualia are not at all nonphysical. They are simply much more difficult to reduce to lower level phenomena and it is this difficulty that has led to a sense of mystery and bewilderment. As Chalmers states, there’s nothing we are more intimate with than consciousness and yet, it is hard to understand the phenomenal aspect of it. It’s difficult because we often think about this aspect in isolation of real world objects that give rise to these experiences and the accompanying what it’s like of these experiences. We become aware of these various objects and they are represented in some way within our consciousness, these mirror structures pervade all of our experiences, and information mediates the link between consciousness and awareness, but one often fails to account for the things around us, and the physical phenomena and laws that imbue these things with qualities.

Unless one is to go full idealist and deny the independent existence of objects around us, there’s no denying that our phenomenal consciousness, as Hegel well understood, partly reduces to the things around us. This theory may be doused in speculation, but speculation, given our current circumstances, is required. This is how we bring ideas to the fore and make them available for discussion, elucidation, and refutation. What’s manifest is that my theory is wholly naturalistic and accounts for mental states without need for a supernatural agent or explanation.

The primary objection one can raise is that it appears I have begged the question with regards to the existence of objects. They will argue that what’s required is an epistemological account that accounts for the existence of things around us. I would agree that such a requirement is a reasonable demand. I have not, however, begged the question. There’s still the fact that we seem to experience other things and people, so even if some version of idealism holds, my theory would make for a secondary explanation of consciousness. The primary one would focus on how exactly the mind is responsible for reality as we experience it.

Another objection will certainly involve self-knowledge, which given my account, wouldn’t be at all possible without other people and things. Following philosophy’s long history of thought experiments and setting aside the question of whether conceivability entails logical possibility and the question of whether logical possibility entails ontological reality, I will ask the reader to imagine the other philosophical zombie (p-zombie). Chalmers has argued that the mere logical possibility of there being a p-zombie like his entails that physicalism is false. His p-zombie, which is a zombie that’s psychologically indistinguishable from any other human being, lacks qualia and therefore, lacks phenomenal consciousness. His p-zombie gets the most attention though at least one other has been offered. Steven Harnad offered a neurological p-zombie. His p-zombie isn’t one designed to counter physicalism. Rather, it’s one employed to bolster the case for the Computational Theory of Mind and a case for artificial intelligence.89

Imagine a person indistinguishable from a human being. Now imagine that this person is blind, deaf, and mute. Further, imagine that this person cannot taste, smell or feel anything. Imagine that this person is devoid of all senses, even the sense of knowing when it’s time to urinate and digest. On my Hegelian reductionist account, sensations feature in the information received from the physical world. Sights, sounds, colors, textures, and so on inform our awareness, a structure comprised of our nervous systems, skin, sense apparatus and other smaller structures like papillae; this in turn informs our consciousness. Information mediates awareness and consciousness. This is in agreement with David Chalmers’ view. Where we differ is that I conclude that without our senses, we would not have phenomenal consciousness, especially since the qualia of sight, for instance, is simultaneous with whatever we are seeing.

My p-zombie shows that my reductionist account succeeds, since accounting for the p-zombie’s self-knowledge and qualia is impossible. Whatever account one might render is all but ineffable. Can this p-zombie proceed as Descartes did and eventually say “I think therefore I am”? If s/he knows of no people and no other objects, how can this person prove him/herself to exist? On my differential ontological view, we know who we are, in part, because of differentiation with other people and objects; there are no essential properties about us. So if such a p-zombie is possible and lacks what Chalmers calls the structure of awareness, how then can it retain a structure of consciousness? Moreover, if it lacks senses and cannot receive information, how then is his/her consciousness informed? If Chalmers’ p-zombie refutes physicalism, my p-zombie proves physicalism; a stalemate would ensue. My p-zombie would lack phenomenal consciousness only because s/he lacks all senses. This shows quite conclusively that qualia are dependent on our senses and the objects we interact with, and that without neither of these, we’d have no phenomenal consciousness to speak of.

The goal of this chapter isn’t to ensure that my theory is bulletproof. The goal is to divorce qualia from their supposed connection to supernatural agents or modes of explanation, and despite the speculative nature of my theory, the task has been completed. As mentioned earlier, we can’t simply ignore the insights of neuroscience and cognitive science, and assert that mental states are nonphysical. Neither can we follow Chalmers in overreacting and disavowing materialism due to its seeming failure to solve the hard problem of consciousness. Despite the conundrum of phenomenal consciousness, I’ve chosen not to abandon a strict naturalistic approach and a materialistic framework that has hitherto proven successful. What is demonstrably unsuccessful is the project of proving that nonphysical mental states exist. By extension, arguing from such mental states to the existence of god is unsuccessful.